First Languge Acquisition Exploratory Exercise
Assume that a researcher wants to test a claim such as “Children acquire the phoneme /t/ by age 5.” What issues arise in establishing criteria for whether a particular child has “acquired a phoneme”? That is, consider in which way the term “acquired” might be defined differently by different researchers, and comment on how this might affect their findings. Consider whether a distinction needs to be made between “production” and “mastery” and, if so, what criteria should be used to define “mastery.” Keep in mind also that a particular phoneme such as /t/ will typically have different allophones in different positions (e.g., initial, medial, final, after /s/, and so on).
To acquire a phoneme, a child must have identified and stored it as one of the phonemes of their language. A researcher setting criteria for determining if a child has acquired a phoneme must keep in mind many things. Among them are the difference between knowing something and being able to produce it, and seeing multiple allophones as expressions of a single phoneme.
Children can identify phonemes before they are able to produce
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When the researcher is setting criteria, they should remember that there are edge cases, where their standard assumptions may be false. They should be aware of children that have partial hearing loss, whether due to permenantly impared hearing or a series of temporary ear infections, who may not be able to distinguish between particular phonemes. This would mean that the researcher should make a decision as to whether a phoneme is acquired if it is also being used incorrectly in place of another phoneme. The second phoneme, that the first sound is being used in place of, clearly has not been acquired, but whether the first phoneme, which has had the second phonemen’s function misatributed to it, is acquired is
This research is intended to analyze the transcript of a child’s speech. The target child is a female named Majorie who is 2 years and 3 months old. The transcript is from The Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. The linguistic aspects that will be examined are the phonological processes of the child including speech errors, syllable shapes, and her phonetic inventory consisting of manner and place of articulation. Included in the analysis will be her stage and development of lexical knowledge and what words she uses.
Head to head hits are still a prevalent issue in the Nfl. Should head to head hits lead to an ejection from the game? If a player in college football commits an intentional helmet to helmet hit, the penalty is an ejection. If college football can input this penalty, couldn’t the NFL? We see that former football players who suffered many concussions over their playing careers, have long lasting effects. Some current players feel as though that they can’t control where their hits land and injuries are just a part of the game. Some fans feel as though all these penalties are taking the fun away the game. Former NFL players are an example of what helmet to helmet hits can do.
From the moment an infant is born, it is bombarded with sounds that the brain attempts to categorize. Within the first year of life alone, infants already show preferences for phonologically legal structures in their native language when compared to illegal consonant structures (Friederici et al., 1993). While a personal lexicon is not developed until later in childhood, the early stages, primarily the recognition of word segmentation, begins within the first year of life. The topic of what the important factors are in babies perceiving speech and building a preference to their own language, however, is shrouded in mystery. For instance, Friedrici et al.’s study on phonotactic knowledge of word boundaries gave results that indicate the combination of simple context cues as well as the use of infant directed speech (IDS) allows babies to recognize phonotactically legal structures by nine months. However, McMurray et al.’s results directly contrast those findings by arguing that IDS simply causes a slower rate of speech but does not highlight contrasts between segmented sounds, nor does it enhance phonetic cues. Infant directed speech is a “speech register characterized by simpler sentences, a slower rate, and more variable prosody” (McMurray et al., 2012). While there is controversy regarding the beneficial factors of infant directed speech, most studies indicate that this register is extremely beneficial for infant speech perception in the first year of life.
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. (November 2002). Retrieved October 17, 2004, from http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/coch.asp
The ability for an infant to develop speech is dependent upon the ability of the child to distinguish rhythms of sounds and tones. The infant must break down the phrases of speech that at first sound like pieces of music with varying tones and cadences into distinct words which are linked to meaning. Infants begin breaking down language before they are one year old (Swingley, 2000). The ability to distinguish different sounds from each other, identifying the configuration of words, and recognize that some sounds are similar while other sounds are different is called phonological awareness. This awareness begins in infancy and can be measured as early as age 2. The definition of phonological awareness is still under debate; different definitions include contrasting levels of abilities to distinguish different sounds, abilities to blend sounds, and separating sounds into more basic subunits (Anthony & Francis, 2005).
One of the first steps of learning to read is understanding how letters and sounds correspond to each other. (Goldin-Meadow, S., & Mayberry, R. I, 2001, p.222) During preschool, grapheme-phoneme knowledge is a predictor of a discrepancy in reading later on in school. (Beal-Alvarez, J. S., Lederberg, A. R., & Easterbrooks, S. R, 2012, p.39) Students who are deaf are missing the phoneme part of grapheme-phoneme correspond...
When most people think of the process of language development in “normal” children, the concepts that come to mind are of babies imitating, picking up sounds and words from the speakers around them. Trying to imagine that a child who cannot hear one single sound a person makes can learn to speak a language is absolutely fascinating. These children range from amazin...
I. The Multiple Oppositions approach is an approach that concurrently contrasts multiple target sounds to a comparison sound. Often there is a phoneme collapse, with many sounds being represented by one sound. The phoneme /d/ may replace /t/, /k/, and/or /g/. Any word containing replacement sounds is treated as a homophone. “For example, for a child who collapses voiceless obstruents to /t/ word-initially, the multiple opposition treatment set might include /t/~/k, s, tʃ/ and result in contrastive training words such as tip versus Kip, sip, and chip” (Williams, 2000, p. 290). The Multiple Opposition approach focuses on the child’s sound system as a whole, rather than placing emphasis on one or two phonemes.
The article begins by defining phonemic awareness and gives examples which gave me a better grasp of the topic. Phonemic awareness gives a person the ability to hear the difference between sounds in words even when they sound similar such as the words “sat” and “sit”. Phonemic awareness is a division of the larg...
Phonemic Awareness is very important part of literacy. Phonemic awareness includes sounds of a word, the breakdown of words into sounds. It includes rhyming and alliteration, isolation, counting words in sentences, syllables and phonemes, blending words, segmenting, and manipulating.
Phonology is “the system of contrastive relationships among the speech sounds that constitute the fundamental components of a language” (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/). Articulation tests help the SLT to identify the phonemes in which the child has difficulty, and they test every specific phoneme in the position of a word. This includes word-final devoicing, such as ‘red’ being pronounced as ‘ret’, and also fronting, such as ‘car being pronounced as ‘tar’ (Bowen, 1998). This helps to identify phonological processes, and the elimination of certain phonological processes in a child’s speech and whether they are typical or atypical for their age. The calculation of the PCC (percentage consonants correct) is also an important part of phonology.
There are three main theories of child language acquisition; Cognitive Theory, Imitation and Positive Reinforcement, and Innateness of Certain Linguistic Features (Linguistics 201). All three theories offer a substantial amount of proof and experiments, but none of them have been proven entirely correct. The search for how children acquire their native language in such a short period of time has been studied for many centuries. In a changing world, it is difficult to pinpoint any definite specifics of language because of the diversity and modification throughout thousands of millions of years.
Consequently, usually around the sixth month, the infant begins to babble. A large variety of sounds are produced in this period, many of them do not considered occur in the language of the household. During this period, children are learning to distinguish between the sound that are part of their language, and the one which does not. In the stage of babbling, children are learnt to maintain the correct sounds and suppressed the one which are incorrect.
Learning a first language in childhood is an experience that all normal functioning humans undergo. Learning a second language after childhood, however, is an experience which not everyone attempts or succeeds in. The question of whether learning one’s first language as a child is the same as learning subsequent languages as an adult is one that interests psychologists, scientists and linguists alike. Although in many respects the acquisition process of children learning their first language and adults learning their second, third or fourth language is similar, overall there are striking differences between the manner in which these two groups do so, which mean that the process is not essentially the same across both these groups.
All languages have vast variety of speech sound. Phonology have essentials terms in which each of them show the difference between how phonology is differ than phonetics as its not responsible for how to articulate. These phonological terms known as : phoneme , allophone, clear & dark l , syllabic l, minimal pairs , assimilation ,linking r , intrusive r, aspiration , consonant structure & syllable structure. A phoneme is a meaningful sound which shows the difference between two sounds which can change the meaning of word like : . Although allophones are the variation of same sound but they don’t change the meaning of it like < pin / spin >. However